Our new research, "The structure of pairwise competition drives sudden regime shifts in a microbe–plasmid model", is now available on Journal of the Royal Society Interface!

The study, previously available as a preprint, is now published following peer-review in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface!

In this study, Ying-Jie, with the help of our collaborators, develop a theoretical microbe-plasmid model to investigate when plasmid-carrying bacteria can invade or be eliminated from microbial populations. They show that heterogeneity in competition between plasmid-bearing and plasmid-free strains can generate bistability, allowing multiple stable outcomes under the same conditions. This structure creates the potential for abrupt regime shifts and hysteresis in plasmid dynamics — with important implications for controlling antibiotic resistance.

Read the full paper here: Journal of the Royal Society Interface